Future Proof gaming rig

[dschur]

Want to be able to run most games in Ultra settings without really having to bother with tweaking the settings.  My i7 - 920 lasted me almost 6 years with a couple of graphic card updates and upgrading to an SSD, so looking for the same sort of longevity.

 

USA, $Sub 3,000 budget, I like a full tower. Reasonable noise, not looking for silence, but it is a factor. Cable management and a clean build is a must.  Monitor is a perfectly decent Dell 30" (2560 x 1600 I think). Single monitor setup.  Use is mostly gaming, some Photo processing and non-professional video editing. I may overclock, but will probably go moderate and see if the basic MB settings get me to 4.6 GHz  or so.  Reason for the upgrade is mostly to get to the z170 chipset.  Old MB had no USB3, and getting to the point where performance was not going to cut it with a 6 year old CPU.

 

Anything seem to stick out as a complete waste?  Any suggestions on upgrades to consider, or advice on getting the build quality to 11 ? (considering braided cables for SATA and seeing if the PSU cables look ok or need swapping out)

 

RAM - probably not much value in the higher than base speed, but for $40 or so these sticks seem to avoid the boot issues I've read about  for the Mother board. They look cool too

 

PSU - a bit higher than needed, but 50% headroom does not seem overly wasteful. If I ever did go SLI one day I'd have capacity.

 

Optical Drive - yea, it is out of fashion, but helpful to rip cd's and watch Bru Rays.  Pioneer seems best at read error tolerance.

 

CPU                    Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor

CPU Cooler       Corsair H110i GTX 104.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler 

Motherboard    Asus Z170-DELUXE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard                                                                                 

Memory             G.Skill TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory

Storage SSD     Intel 750 Series 400GB PCI-E Solid State Drive    

Storage SSD     Hitachi Ultrastar 7K6000 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive   

Video Card        Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card    

Case                   Phanteks Enthoo Primo ATX Full Tower Case      

Power Supply    SeaSonic Platinum 860W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

Optical Drive     Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer    

Operating System           Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit)

[Mew]

I would stick with the enthusiast platform and go with the 5820k or something similar. The 6700k would only be a minor improvement, especially if your 920 was already overclocked (I think 3.6ghz to 4ghz was common for that chip).

[shypin]

nice!

im planning on a very similar build but with an ITX board

[The_Stig]

 

 

Optical Drive - yea, it is out of fashion, but helpful to rip cd's and watch Bru Rays.  Pioneer seems best at read error tolerance.

 

 

Your PC seems to be pretty good. I wouldn't expect any problems besides AMD crushing DX12.

Also,

[dschur]

Why 5820? Skylake will easily match OC frequency and the extra 2 cores don't seem to help all that much. Is there much advantage to x99 over z170?

Either is going to be a noticeable improvement over the 920. Don't think I ever got it over 3.7 MHz I think. Overall, I don't know that Haswell or Skylake are going to be any sort of eyepopping change from even my ancient first generation i7. Certainly nothing like we got spoiled with going from Core Duo up to Nehalem.

I was thinking that if I upgraded, going to Skylake and z170 was going to have longer legs than x99. I'll go donsome research on Haswell vs Skylake.

Thanks for the input.

Lol Stig. Bru Rays are the frat boy alternative format. They can show you a movie, and try and get you drunk at the same time

[Inception9269]

CPU                    Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor

CPU Cooler       Corsair H110i GTX 104.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler 

Motherboard    Asus Z170-DELUXE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard                                                                                 

Memory             G.Skill TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory

Storage SSD     Intel 750 Series 400GB PCI-E Solid State Drive    

Storage SSD     Hitachi Ultrastar 7K6000 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive   

Video Card        Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card    

Case                   Phanteks Enthoo Primo ATX Full Tower Case      

Power Supply    SeaSonic Platinum 860W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

Optical Drive     Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer    

Operating System           Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit)

 

Changed things a bit, kind of similar direction as this one. As for those that say you should go with a 5820K, I say a 6700k is better for gaming and future proofing. A 5820K is strong, but the x99 line is more for productive people, and it's upgrade path is very expensive and a waste for just gaming, in comparison to the skylake path. Also since Skylake is the newest series there'll probably be more possibilities with that one. Also temps would be better, and it would come at 4ghz instead of the 5820k's lower clock speed.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($369.99 @ Newegg)

CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($119.99 @ B&H)

Motherboard: Asus Z170 PRO GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($157.98 @ Newegg)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($99.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($84.89 @ OutletPC)

Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($197.89 @ OutletPC)

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($659.99 @ Amazon)

Case: NZXT Phantom 530 (Black) ATX Full Tower Case  ($107.99 @ NCIX US)

Power Supply: XFX PRO Black Edition 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($139.99 @ Amazon)

Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  ($48.89 @ OutletPC)

Total: $1977.60

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-21 23:20 EDT-0400

 

For just gaming a 6700k is the better path in my opinion. The cooler is subjective, but I really like that cooler, and the leds on it makes it stand out more, aesthetically.

The ssd is more practical, compared to an expensive PCI-e one.

Only other thing worth mentioning is the power supply, my preferred brand for those being Xfx

[dschur]

We are pretty close on these builds really. I totally agree the Intel 750 is pure indulgence. I actually have that Samsung in my old system, and may repurpose as the Boot drive in this one. The 750 seems to actually Boot slower even with the new firmware from what I have read.Once running though, exceedingly fast app load times.

I could easily go with that memory. The higher speed has no impact it seems unless you use the integrated graphics (do people really do that?). Trident is mostly bling, and it isn't a whole lot more money.

Almost any of the ASUS boards could be a winner. I like the extra usb 3.1 and Bluetooth on the Deluxe. Some minor stuff like the sound system is nice too. Decent place to save some money like you did, it is an impressive build for a 2k budget.

Have a look at the HGST drive. Performance is a smidge behind the WD (rounding error really) but the HGST has enterprise level MTBF, which I consider more important for a data drive.

For the power supply we are dealing with personal preference. Both are cranking Amps in the 70 plus range for 12v rail, which is really what matters. I've just always like Seasonic, and I like how quiet it can be at low load.

I think the GIGABYTE card is slightly higher OC potential, and at low load the cooling is very quiet. Not a big difference either way, I just like the whole rig to go close to silent when I'm not gaming.

The Kraken and the new H110i are similar performance, so it probably comes down to aesthetic preference. I was going to go with the Kraken until seeing a video review of the Corsair. Guess the look worked for me, Kraken is nice too.

Agree totally on the Skylake path being my first choice, although I will revisit the Haswell one more time to be sure

[brob]

Samsung SM951 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive might be a better choice than the Intel 750. Does not occupy a PCIe slot, boots faster, and has roughly the same or better performance except under heavy workloads.

[dschur]

Thanks Brob.  Only concern on the gumstick drives is the thermals. The 750 is big and takes up a slot, but that lets it cool better, and allows it to have an actual heatsink.  SInce I no longer need to leave a slot for a 56K faxmodem (lol, just noticed I still had one in my old rig) or even a sound card, I'm not really going to use the PCIe slots past the graphics card. The SM951 (or the new 950 Pro NVMe) are pretty close to the Intel cost wise, although they are 112 GB bigger for that money.

 

I think I am going to pull the trigger on this as is.  Worst case if the boot time starts to piss me off I will put in the old SATA SDD for boot only.The new drivers seem to have improved the 750 boot time, but some data seems to suggest that ANY PCIe or M2 drive is going to boot slower than SATA.

[NumLock21]

Why 5820? Skylake will easily match OC frequency and the extra 2 cores don't seem to help all that much. Is there much advantage to x99 over z170?

Either is going to be a noticeable improvement over the 920. Don't think I ever got it over 3.7 MHz I think. Overall, I don't know that Haswell or Skylake are going to be any sort of eyepopping change from even my ancient first generation i7. Certainly nothing like we got spoiled with going from Core Duo up to Nehalem.

I was thinking that if I upgraded, going to Skylake and z170 was going to have longer legs than x99. I'll go donsome research on Haswell vs Skylake.

Thanks for the input.

Lol Stig. Bru Rays are the frat boy alternative format. They can show you a movie, and try and get you drunk at the same time

Your current 1366 is a enthuisat platform and is able to support a 6 core cpu. Skylake is newer but it tops out at 4 cores. Socket 2011 continues from where your 1366 lefts off and goes beyond that 6 core limit. Now with socket 2011-3 (Haswell-E) it can scale from 8 and up to 18 cores. Not that you need a 18 core cpu, but that's what socket 2011-3 is capable of. Also memory on 1366 is triple channel so getting X99 would mean you're upgrading the ram technology as well to quad channel. Skylake is stuck at dual channel. Because you've owned a enthusiast X58, it help you skipped most of the mainstream platforms and that's 1156,1155,1150, as well as the enthusiast X79. Price difference between Z170 and X99 is about $100, and a 5820K at MicroCenter is about $300.

[dschur]

Thanks for the insight numlock. Guess it helps me understand why my old one never ever seemed worth upgrading. Gonna go do some deep study of x99

Cheers

[dschur]

Completed the build going with the 750.

 

Final thoughts:  

 

1) Despite the ranting on the internetz, the boot time on the 750 after post is 10-15 seconds.  I haven't even installed the updated firmware, and won't until Intel releases it in the basic control software, vs the data center version.  Maybe something else will be 5 seconds quicker, but honestly, it doesn't matter.  Once running, apps load almost instantly.

 

2)  Case is ridiculously large.  I loved the space available, and cable management is a dream.  Only ugly bit is the PCIe cables to the graphics card. The ones from the PSU are a bit short, and have two sets of plugs at the end.  These will be replaced to tidy it up.  Despite this, While I will not admit to the wife, it is a bit large.

 

3)  Overclocked to 4.6 without really trying hard.  The AI software went nuts trying to go over 5 GHz, and seems to read the wrong temp value from the CPU.  Just used the basic tuning in BIOS, and hold 4.6, stable, with the H110 set to the Quiet mode. Pump still at max, but fans are almost silent.  Could probably do more here, but not really necessary.

 

Have yet to figure out a way to actually overstress this. Even the fans on the video card barely come on during the heaviest gaming I tried, and then only the middle speeds.

 

Only issue during build was the Sound drivers.  To avoid the loads of crapware that seem to come on the "Install Disks" I just downloaded all drivers directly and installed.  I missed the Realtek one, so the sound didn't work.  After install they were fine.  Everything else was perfect with a fresh install of Win 10.  I am sure there is room to save in a few areas, and maybe this setup doesn't have the performance headroom of a X99 system, but it was easy as heck to get set up and going, and performance is a hug step up from my old setup.

 

Thanks for the comments and feedback, All good points, and were worth considering, if only to help me feel comfortable with the ultimate direction.

[brob]

@dschur, sounds like you have built a sweet system. Enjoy. Thanks for reporting back.